performance-optimization

A measure-first workflow for improving code that has evidence of being slow. It uses measurements such as profiles, response targets, web performance scores, or before-and-after regressions to guide changes.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it when a requirement, user report, profile, large dataset, or measurable regression identifies a bottleneck.
Why use it?
It prevents unnecessary complexity by requiring proof of a performance problem before optimizing.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

Install

Getting it into your agent

One page per mod, every tool's command on it. A separate URL per tool would split the same page into five that compete with each other.

agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/nexus-substrate/nexus-agents/performance-optimization
Any agent
npx skills add nexus-substrate/nexus-agents --skill performance-optimization
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/nexus-substrate/nexus-agents

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Per session 71 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 1,334 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 1 finding. Scan, not verified.
Origin original No closer match found in the catalogue.
Token cost

What it costs to keep this loaded

Counted locally with the o200k_base tokenizer, which is exact for GPT models; Claude uses its own tokenizer and its counts differ. Treat this as one consistent yardstick across the catalogue rather than a bill. Prices are per million input tokens.

ModelPer sessionOnce invoked
Fable 5 $0.00071 $0.01334
Opus 5 $0.00036 $0.00667
Sonnet 5 $0.00014 $0.00267
Haiku 4.5 $0.00007 $0.00133

Measured 2d ago against content hash ae7c6e92a55f, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

performance-optimization scanned grade A with 1 finding against 26 rules in 11 categories — prompt injection, anti-refusal, data exfiltration, privilege escalation, supply chain, agent snooping, system-prompt leakage, SSRF and excessive agency — measured 2d ago.

A static scan of the body, not an audit. Every finding is printed with the line that produced it so you can judge whether it matters here. A mod is markdown that instructs an agent; that is exactly why what it instructs is worth reading.

Runs shell commandslowCapability

Expected in a hook, worth knowing in a rule or an instructions file.

| **Synchronous I/O in hot path** | `readFileSync`, `execSync` per request | Async + worker pool, or cache the result |
skills/performance-optimization/SKILL.md · 88 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 88 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Performance Optimization Skill

When to apply

  • Performance requirements are stated in the spec or issue (e.g., "list endpoint must p95 < 200ms")
  • Users or monitoring report slow behavior with a reproducible scenario
  • Core Web Vitals scores fall below "Good" thresholds (LCP < 2.5s, INP < 200ms, CLS < 0.1)
  • A specific commit or PR introduced a measurable regression vs prior baseline
  • Code handles datasets large enough that complexity dominates (n > 10k or rps > 100)

Skip when:

  • There's no measurement showing a problem — "feels slow" without a profile is not a justification
  • The fix would add complexity disproportionate to the win (5% improvement at the cost of unreadable code)
  • Performance is dominated by a downstream system you don't control (e.g., the LLM round-trip)
  • The hot path is run once per cold-start — micro-optimizing startup isn't worth the readability cost

"Premature optimization is the root of all evil." Don't optimize before you have evidence. The cost of complexity is permanent; the cost of waiting for evidence is one more profile run.

The MIFVG cycle

  1. MEASURE — establish baseline with real data. Synthetic benchmarks are starting points, not ground truth. Capture both p50 and p95.
  2. IDENTIFY — profile. Don't guess the bottleneck — measure it. Tools: node --prof, clinic.js, browser DevTools Performance, pprof for memory.
  3. FIX — address the specific bottleneck. One change at a time. If two things are slow, fix the worst one first and re-measure.
  4. VERIFY — re-measure with the same scenario. The improvement must be reproducible, not a single lucky run.
  5. GUARD — add a monitoring assertion, a test budget, or a performance gate so the fix doesn't silently regress. The Beyoncé Rule applies — if you measured it, put a guard on it.

Read the full file on GitHub · 88 lines

Changes

What this file has done since we first saw it

Hashed on every crawl. A supply-chain change to an agent config is a question of when, not whether, so the history is kept rather than the latest state alone.

  1. 2d ago First seen · 88 lines · 71 tokens per session scan A ae7c6e92a55f

Subscribe to this mod's changes

performance-optimization is a skill published in the GitHub repository nexus-substrate/nexus-agents (18 stars, last pushed yesterday), licensed MIT. It adds 71 tokens to every session and 1,334 once invoked, about $0.0004 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it A with 1 finding (runs shell commands). No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-08-30.

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